Thread: Stupid question about jointers & thicknessers

yup, correct on all counts, joint a face and an edge then 'thickness' the other 2 surfaces to be parallel and, with an 8" jointer, 8" is the maximum face width ... but there are some tricks!
First of all, begging forgiveness from the darksiders, you can make a sled, as simple or complicated as takes your fancy, fix the rough board to it, and feed it through the thicknesser until the top surface is true. Then remove it and feed it through the thicknesser again to make the new surface parallel. You can then fix the board with 2 milled and parallel faces to a sacrificial board, feed it through the table saw using the sacrificial board edge to cut one true edge on the workpiece, detach it and feed it through again to rip the other edge .... simple!
I think that a 6" jointer and 12" thicknesser are the normal hobby starting point.
Hope this helps, Fletty

Sounds like youve got a prety good handle on it to me.

Yes an 8" jointer can only SAFELY joint an 8" board. Yoiu could do wider than that if you are silly enough to remove the gaurd on the machine and then end for end the board.

Although this will create it's own problems because one side you'll be planing against the grain.

Why do the sell thicknessers twice the size of jointers (I have a 6" buzzer and a 12" thicknesser) ? I don't know. However, if you rip say a 12' board in two, you can then safely joint both halves, edge join the boards and run the result through the thicknesser. So you've effectively planed a 12" board in one pass.

Hope the above makes sense.

Craig

Duck (well - flyingduck).

I have the 8" jointer and 15" thicknesser. A great combination - in fact finished up surfacing some beech a few minutes back. Although the 8" jointer is limited to the obvious 8"(200mm) wide boards, I must say that there ain't many boards out there wider than 200mm any more, and when you find them, they are either expensive or in a bad state. As Craig said, just rip the boards, machine and join the run thru the thicknesser. One advantage of this, is that when ripping the board you free the timber of any hidden stresses that it may have. If you the let the timber settle for a couple of days and then machine, you end up with a more stable board after joining (remember to mark the wood to join the same edges again to give the original look of the board)
Hope this helps.
Les

Originally Posted by fletty

y
First of all, begging forgiveness from the darksiders, you can make a sled, as simple or complicated as takes your fancy, fix the rough board to it, and feed it through the thicknesser until the top surface is true. Then remove it and feed it through the thicknesser again to make the new surface parallel. You can then fix the board with 2 milled and parallel faces to a sacrificial board, feed it through the table saw using the sacrificial board edge to cut one true edge on the workpiece, detach it and feed it through again to rip the other edge .... simple!
y

For a photo explanation of what Fletty is saying, check out the latset newsletter at :
www.tritonwoodworkers.org.au
(July newsletter) We did exactly that at our meeting.

I think the difference in size stems from the difficulty in making jointers wider due to the need for a solid table. Going out to 15" makes a big mother of a machine but a thicknesser can be that wide and still be a benchtop model.

Originally Posted by FlyingDuck

This might be a pretty obvious question to most of you, but I have only been woodworking with my Triton for a couple of years and now want to expand and buy some more machinery.

At the moment I am looking at jointers & thicknessers to true up boards. I have never used either of these before, and only read a bit about them on this forum.

From my undertanding you use the jointer to get one edge & one face flat, and then can use the thicknesser/table saw to get the other face/edge parallel. It seems an 8" jointer & a 15" thicknessers is average for the amateur woodworker.

Is it correct that with an 8" jointer, you are limited to truing up the face of 8" wide boards or less?

What do you do when a board is wider than this?

Why then are thicknessers sold which can handle twice or even three times this width?

It all depends on how deep your pockets are!!!

If your boards are wider concider ripping to fit jointer/thicknesser

PM me if ya want to see a demo or learn a bit more hands on.

Thanks for the great replies. It's all starting to make sense, thanks to the help from youse all.

Major Panic, will send you a PM

Of course the other consideration is what are you trying to build.
If you go for a jointer/thicknesser, 250mm may be wide enough. This size is plenty wide enough to thickness drawer sides.
Ask yourself how often will you need to work on a board wider than 200—250mm. Mostly the timber I see that is wider than this is in the form of slabs which presents a different set of design challenges

ian

It depends .......

If you want to make small things like boxes, then a small (6 inch) jointer and bench-top thicknesser will be more than adequate. This would also be OK for the occasional furniture piece.

If you mainly want to make furniture then 8 inch jointer (long tables) and 15 inch (or wider) thicknesser is the way to go. It is an over-simplification, but the preparation side of making furniture boils down to making:

1) Lots of "frame" pieces that are typically 65mm X 19mm, and
2) Pieces for sides, top etc that are typically 19mm thick by 80-150mm wide and glued up to make a finished wider piece maybe 400-600 mm wide.
3) "Panel" pieces that are basically the same as 2) but perhaps not as wide and perhaps ending up only 15mm thick

The "frame" pieces need to be exactly parallel in width and equi-thickness. The other pieces don't necessarily have to be exactly parallel in width.

When I start a job I like to size all the timber at once. So when I set the thicknesser to a given thickness every piece is that same thickness. If "most" of my frame pieces are 65mm wide, for example, I also run them edge-wise through the thicknesser set at 65mm (10 pieces together so they support each other).

I don't find the 8 inch width on my jointer to be a limitation. Panels have to be glued up anyway. I'd rather make a 400mm wide panel out of 4-5 boards each 80-100 wide than two 200mm wide boards. I like to make panels out of quarter-sawn boards if I can, and wide boards are usually plain sawn and prone to cupping. If I was intending to use a plain-sawn 200mm wide board I'd probably split it into two 100mm wide boards first - not because of width limitations of the jointer, but to relieve stresses like lesmeyer suggests.

The jointer makes the edges exactly 90 deg and dead straight, so, when properly tuned, it is joy to make glued-up wide panels. And if you make sure the two final edge-joint passes for each joint has the abutting pieces one against the fence and one away from the fence then your panel will be dead flat even if the jointer fence is not precisely 90 deg to the tables. Then after glue-up it might only take a few passes with a hand plane to dress up the whole panel.

Nevertheless, why use a hand plane if you have a wide thicknesser that can thickness a whole 400mm wide panel. This is where a 20 inch thicknesser supplements an 8 inch jointer. If I want a panel 15 mm thick I'll usually start with pieces 19mm thick and reduce to final size on the full-width panel on the thicknesser.

Qw